ATOMIC LUCAS

Endless wishes lead to endless chaos when a boy gets his hands on a powerful magical item in this French import.

Lucas Atomic can’t wait for his 13th birthday, when he’ll finally get his chance to use his family’s prized Gloom Stone, which grants any and every wish. But when his parents decide he’s not mature enough and plan to make him wait another year, Lucas steals the stone and wishes a whole heap of trouble onto himself, his family, and their Atomic Manor (which looks like a tiny ramshackle cottage on the outside but inside is positively palatial). After breaking all three sacred rules (in return for the Gloom Stone’s powers, Lucas’ family promises to uphold the principles of secrecy, wisdom, and kindness), Lucas begs his smart friend Julia Greene for help; his plushie-turned-sentient red panda, Mewmew, serves as sidekick on their quest to set things right. Meanwhile, Lucas’ ancestor Atomic the Fool changes out of his statue form to regain the stone (and turn all of humanity into pigeons). In this fast-paced, absorbing fantasy with real-world trappings (for instance, Julia’s a committed environmentalist), Lucas learns what many wishers before him have: “I always thought that if I had everything I ever wanted, I’d finally be happy…but I just made a mess of everything.” In Carita’s well-composed cartoon artwork, Lucas wears big red-framed glasses; he and his family are pale-skinned, while Julia is brown-skinned with white hair.

A zippy page-turner.